The places of wit in early modern English comedy
By: Adam Zucker
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2011
Place of publication: Cambridge; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 255
ISBN-13: 9781107003088
Copyright date: 2011
Subjects: Humor in literature; Space in literature; English drama; History and criticism; Public spaces in literature; Setting (Literature); LITERARY CRITICISM / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh; English drama (Comedy)
Description: "What is wit made out of in the comedies of Shakespeare, Jonson, Shirley and their contemporaries? What does it hide? What does it reveal? This book addresses these questions by turning to the relationship between comic form and local history. Explorations of familiar sites, including Windsor Forest, Smithfield, Covent Garden and Hyde Park, are matched with close readings of drama that focus on overlays between theatrical, spatial, narrative and social conventions. Dramatic comedy's definitive interest in cultural competency and incompetence, and wit and witlessness, is revealed through discussions of commerce, gambling, royal forests and new or newly public spaces in and around early modern London. Along with Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor and Ben Jonson's Epicene and Bartholomew Fair, special emphasis is placed on the neglected town comedies of the 1630s - the forerunners of the Restoration comedy of manners and satirical realism of our own day"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 229-246) and index.
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note: Preface; Introduction; 1. Shakespeare's green materials: Windsor Forest and The Merry Wives of Windsor; 2. Ben Jonson's gallant London; 3. Covent Garden: town culture and the location of wit; 4. Another green world: or, how to use Hyde Park; Epilogue: the game of culture; Works cited.